Psalm 123

To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.

Sermon Text

Today’s Psalm is a word of extreme comfort and of dire warning. Oftentimes, those two things come hand in hand. For God to have control over all the Earth means that those who are suffering trouble now can trust that God has the power to set things right. For those who are comfortable now, and do nothing to help those who are in trouble, the pendulum slides the other way. The words of scripture commonly group people into two categories – the righteous and the wicked. What I find most interesting in how scripture orients itself in matters of justice is that what makes a person wicked is not usually what they do, but what they do not do.

I think it is easiest to see this in Jesus’s words in Matthew 25. Looking to the end of history, Jesus separates all of humanity into two groups. On his right there are sheep ready for eternal rest and on the left goats that are fit only for destruction. What separates the two? Is it a denomination or affiliation? Doctrinal purity and contribution to Church treasuries? No! It is in one simple capacity – mercy. When you saw someone hungry did you feed them? Someone naked did you clothe them? Someone in trouble and you helped out any way you could? These alone are the qualifications put forward in the great judgment set forward by Jesus.

Salvation is a free gift of God, but it naturally bears fruit. That fruit is something that we should constantly be cultivating and growing. I am famously bad at gardening and one of the reasons for that is that I am forgetful – shocking to many of you as that might be. I forget to move the plant from the sun or to add nutrients to the soil. When the frost comes, the cover it needed to survive sits unused by the door… No plant ever crosses my threshold without being given a death sentence. Yet, for many of us, our salvation faces a similar problem. We are content with having said the right words, and being splashed with water in just the right way, and we do not care at all to develop the amazing gift we have been given.

In the history of God’s people, the Psalms became a book used in worship during the Babylonian exile. The people were scattered across the Babylonian empire. The rich were placed in positions in government in the new world, not free but not put to hard labor either. The poor were put to that labor that the rich were not fit for. Those who remained in Judah became serfs to regional authorities, those in diaspora to other people in power. For this scattered people, the poetry and songs of their people became essential for survival. While the Psalms we have today are those primarily used among the people in Babylon, many more are likely lost to time that gave them strength.

Throughout scripture, God is presented in terms that are used to describe worldly leaders. God is King, or Emperor, or Feudal Lord, all based on the language of the people who are writing that scripture. The reason for this verbiage is not to make God another ruler among many, but to establish that God is different from worldly rulers. Early Christians, for example, would describe Jesus as Δεσποτης (Despotes,) the word from which we get “Despot.” This was not to say that Jesus was just another ruler like the Caesars that abused them, but to say that there was only one person who could claim to rule their lives – that Caesar was not their Despot, instead Christ was.

In our Psalm, we see the Psalmist doing this exact same kind of linguistic dance. The Lord is enthroned in Heaven. They look up from the ground to the open hand of their God. The enslaved People of God say that they look up to God like a slave looks to their Master, again taking the language of oppression and applying it to God to take away its sting. They look to God who is in Heaven, and they beg for mercy, because the world has not given it. They have been mocked by those who are at peace because they are not. They have been cast aside by the wealthy because they have nothing.

The Psalm carries an implication with it. For those who are mocked, there is hope of redemption. For those who are cast aside, there is a place of welcome. The God we worship is a God who prioritizes the Losers over the Winners. Whether it is the second born son of a patriarch in Genesis, or the nations of Israel and Judah against Assyria and Babylon, God does not side with the powerful, but with the powerless. For those of us who face hardship – economic, health related, or social – God is on the side of the downtrodden and promises to raise up all who suffer unjustly in this world. Looking back a few weeks, this should echo what we spoke of previously in Leviticus.

The Blessing of God’s care for the downtrodden is that we can never be too low to know God’s goodness. There is, however, a stern warning that is implied in this passage. What happens when we take the spot of the person who put us down all that time? When we make enough money to be secure, where previously we were troubled, what do we do with our prosperity? When the hard times pass into moments of ease, are we willing to reach out and lift others up, or are we comfortable pulling the ladder up after ourselves?

I have become more sure of the goodness of God each year of my life. I see in the Gospel a promise that there is always a home I can come to, always a place for me in God’s heart. I also am sure, more and more, that that means there is a place in God’s heart for everyone else too. No one is beyond the Grace of God, no one is unclean in the eyes of a God who is making all things new. Am I, the person God has chased down across the ages and brought out of death, willing to accept that as true. Can I devote my life to loving all people, because God was willing to do everything possible to love me? To paraphrase Paul, “It’s one thing to die for someone you know and like, but dying for someone wicked you haven’t met… That takes a love like Jesus’s.” Yet, as large and powerful a love that is, it is the love we are called to take part in.

Our Psalmist cries out that they have had more than enough contempt. They were chased away by the well off and mocked by those with their life put together. Maybe we are in a season where we feel cast off or like the only words we ever hear are said to mock us. If so, we can trust that God is there to take hold of us and see us through those troubles. For those of us at ease, the burden is shifted onto us. If God is on the side of rejects, then maybe we should be too. There are obvious ways we take the side of people in need – supporting programs that feed and give resources – but is there more we can do?

Prayer is the starting point for any work of God’s people. If you need direction, prayer can give you a path forward. If you need to decide whether it’s your place to do something, God will help in discernment. If you know what you need to do, and just do not want to, prayer is always a good place to start. From that jumping off point of prayer, there is usually an action that will present itself. Sometimes that action is to defer to someone else to do something, but there will often be some way in any given moment to show love to someone. The true essence of our work is always that we are seeking to reiterate God’s love in this world. Beyond action in the moment, we should support people who support the downtrodden – with more prayer, with funds, and yes sometimes our votes.

It is often said that the opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. Our scripture supports that. God’s mercy is put in contrast with the scorn and “contempt,” of the people of this earth. “Contempt,” here is used elsewhere to mean something that is set aside and forgotten. Most notably to describe a lamp that someone leaves by their table as they sleep, but that they quickly grab a hold of when they are afraid they might fall down the stairs. If nothing else, we should be a people who make sure no one is forgotten. While we may forget the faces and names of those in need, God does not. May we never let apathy overcome our love for one another. – Amen.